That Awful Smile
by Alsike
Summary: This is Lana/Chloe femslash, it is not graphic, it is not sexual, it is a little story I spilled into the computer after seeing the episode with the spaceship and the scary hand guy, but no real spoilers. don't flame me. it's a happy story.


Summary: Lana's POV, I wrote it late at night and it's somewhat disjointed and wanders off on tangents, but I don't want to turn it into an essay; people don't think in complete sentences. PG-13 for some swearing. This is Femslash. Ch/La (Isn't it annoying that it's Clark, Chloë, Lana, Lex.) 

Chloë came up to me today. She had her brave face on, the one that says I'm going to say something, I mean the exact opposite but I'm going to be self-sacrificing here, and you better not let me. Clark never gets it, but I can always see it. I see her afterwards, tears streaking her face. She sometimes admits the truth to me in her terribly self-deprecating way. I hate it when she does that, so I smile my perfect cheerleader smile and tell her she isn't a terrible person: that she doesn't set herself up for a fall. It's a lie. She doesn't just set herself up for a fall, she builds a scaffold and hangs herself, and here she goes again. I wasn't going to let it happen. We're just starting to become good friends. I want to be her friend; she's special. Sometimes, when she gets that sad look in her eyes I just want to wrap her in my arms until the thing that makes me accepting and comfortable with anything floods into her and she'll smile her sparkling special smile at me and tell me everything will be okay. Sometimes I just need someone to tell me that everything is fine. I want her to hold me back and comfort me, and tell me wild stories from the Wall of Weird that all turn out happily, because she loves me. Nevertheless, I know she won't. She's not like me. When things get bad, she hates herself and smiles that big shit-eating teary-eyed smile. She can't comfort me because that's my job, and her pessimism, morbidity, and self-destructive personality make her loveable, but completely unable to have a relationship with. She just sucks everything out of you… but sometimes all I want to do is give. When she's excited about some new discovery, some new weirdness, some great thing that she's sure will happen… she's so trusting, it's just setting herself up… she exudes energy and you want to be around her so you can just suck it up. It's just… if I tell her, what will I get? The excited happy Chloë or the depressive miserable Chloë, who I want to do so much for, but who won't let me.

Well, she came up to me today, with her brave face, and said exactly what I expected her to say, "I know you like Clark, and he really likes you so it's fine with me if you go out, in fact I'm happy for you." Then she smiles her big shit-eating smile. The tears haven't started yet. 

Things are great as they are. I don't have to deal with Whitney. I just sent him the video telling him what's really going on. Maybe I'll get a furious letter written in blood, but what really can he do? Clark is a strange one, another product of the meteorite attack I'll presume, but I'm going to figure him out eventually and Chloë will have a friend on her wall of weird. Chloë, back to her, I'm getting closer to her, and I like it. I like watching her and daydreaming about the relationship it's impossible for us to have. I like being around her, when she's happy and when she's sad. I like comforting her, but I want to keep her safe, stop her from getting hurt so often. I'd hold her so carefully, she's worth it, but as I said impossible, and not just because we live in small town central. Smallville is just that, small and conservative. Everyone knows everyone else's business. If I kissed her once, everyone would know. Neither of us could ever live it down. It would become the entire sum of our identities. I don't want to become Lana Lang the lesbian. I'm already the fairy princess, the poor little orphan, the perfect student-cheerleader-coffee house manager. I don't have a life. I don't have enough time to date Chloë and she doesn't have enough time for me. She has the Torch and the weirdness that she loves, but she's a normal girl, not traumatized like me, so happy, so desperate for love. 

All right, stop, rewind, "…in fact I'm happy for you." Smile.

"I'm not interested in Clark in that way Chloë," I'm interested in you. I'm interested in the way your lips curve so painfully when you smile like that, the way your hair falls into your face, the way you usually smile when you're with me, you know, when your smile brightens up my day, because I know you trust me. "Honest, I know he likes me, but he's never been more than a friend to me."

"Is there someone else?" I nodded, smiling to myself, knowing she'll never guess, besides the extreme arrogance it would take to guess yourself in a question like this.

"Do you want to tell me?" I look at her. This is not the most usual thing for her to say. Something changed while she was in Metropolis. She seems to have become a lot more perceptive, less innocent, stronger. She met my eyes and I was lost in them. "You wanted to hear stories about my time in Metropolis, but all I appeared to be able to think about was what had happened at the end of last year. I didn't want to talk about it because I was dealing with something that happened much more recently and I still didn't know what I could tell, but I'll tell you everything because… because I trust you."

Wow, she has changed. Something about her is making me think that she might pick me up when I fell, that maybe having her in a relationship wouldn't be the terrible depressing thing I thought it was.

"It's you," I whisper.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"That wasn't the 'what' that said I didn't hear you properly. That was the 'what' that said I couldn't believe what you said."

"Oh." That's the very understated 'oh' that means, 'Oh my god I am in so much trouble!'

She smiled, that trusting, not painful, not shit-eating smile, that I've only seen her get around me. It made my stomach tremble. I wanted to have her hold me. I wanted to cling to her like the mother I lost so young, but this was the moment where she would tell me whether what I wanted was plausible or not.

She steps closer to me and touches my shoulder. "Over the summer I had the time to straighten out all my feelings. Clark is mad for you. So am I. I wanted Clark for a lot of reasons, and I was sad that I lost him for a lot of reasons. But one of them was jealousy, I didn't want him to have you."

She looks so scared now; she's been so bold and here comes the reckoning.

"And you come up to me saying you're happy for us." I slip my arms around her, "I need to stop you from doing that. Say what you feel, not what you ought to say. What if I thought you meant it and went off with Clark? You would be as sunk as you always have been. I want to know what you really feel."

"I love you," she whispered. I touched her lips. They were so soft. Then I touched my lips to hers. Everything's changed. I just hope that with her I can still be just plain Lana, and she can be just Chloë. But whatever happens I just want to be with her. Sometimes your dreams work out. Unfortunately it's usually the ones that you wish would keep quiet and just go away. I'm glad this one did though, but… what are we going to do now?


End file.
